Maine Owl

So glad to hear NPR Talk of the Nation's Neal Conan have on yesterday WaPo resident numbnut Jackson Diehl (whose job it is to make sure all Post opeds are as supercilious as possible with respect to critique of US and Israeli policy) to tell us about Israel's Gaza Vindication.

The upshot--The Israelis can burn as many people as they want with white phosphorus because they can get away with it:

Mr. DIEHL: That's right. But from the Israeli point of view, that condemnation [ref to Goldstone Report] has really been not a major setback. They're used to being condemned by the United Nations. The United Nations Human Rights Council, which was what appointed this commission, has spent most of its time condemning Israel over the last two or three years. And the fact is that these reports and condemnations end up having very little impact because the commission itself has been discredited. The Bush - the Obama administration already has dismissed this Goldstone report.

The first answer today will be a freebie. Your free question is, Which world leader has declared that Iran must "come clean" on its nuclear program after the existence of a small, long-known-about underground enrichment facility was "revealed" on Friday?

Of course the answer is President Barack Obama who Friday in Pittsburgh at a G-20 meeting news conference said,

When we meet with them on October 1st, they are going to have to come clean and they are going to have to make a choice.

Doesn't that sound somehow familiar? If you've been paying attention for the last couple of decades, it should! So for your quiz today, please give the letter of the person or persons below who said (or wrote) each of the following. (Note: A certain country name has been replaced by "[they]" so as not to reveal too much about the answer.):

1. ____ "So, they have to come clean. They wanted to come clean, OK? They could not come fully clean, then they'll have to declare things they don't want to give. So, they give partial documentation in a hurry. There were some notes, there were some documents they shouldn't have, if they wanted, if they were serious, they shouldn't have."


2. ____ "[Have they] come clean at last?"


3. ____ "We asked for a declaration of all of his WMD come clean. He refused to do that. He?s, again, continued to do everything he could to thwart the inspectors. I'm hard-put to specify what it is he could do with credibility at this stage that would alter the outcome. He's always had the option of coming clean, of complying with the resolution, of giving up all of his weapons of mass destruction, ..."


4. ____ "I do feel that there's still reason to believe that he is hiding and has not come totally clean. ... And I am anticipating a unanimous view that we've got to keep our eyes wide open and not be lulled by some letter or some very belated offering ...."

Please pick from these choices:

A. George H. W. Bush
B. Khidhir Hamza
C. David Albright and Robert Kelley
D. Richard Bruce Cheney

Please post your answers in a comment. Solutions will be given in a couple of days.

Last good one


Odds and ends

It was not the worst year for the garden. Yes, the tomatoes were pretty much a disaster, plagued by a blight that limited the number of good brandywines to about ten. On the other hand, the zucchini and those hot peppers produced well for eight weeks!

Prins & Hayes (The Nation, September 23, 2009) : "People are pissed off but too bewildered to know what to do with that anger."


Adapted from "It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bailouts, Bonuses, and Backroom Deals From Washington to Wall Street" by Nomi Prins

Here is a crazy idea for discussion: Not only does the public not know what to do with its anger, it actually fails even to grasp the scale of the enormous screwing we have received in the banking bailout. Most members of the population lack essential concepts and comparative measurement ability due to cognitive deficits directly related to lack of quantitative literacy.

The graphic above (click to see a legible version) illustrates a $17.5 trillion (with a "t") one-year commitment of the public to cover the bad bets of financial industry geniuses.

Meanwhile, conservative thinkers will pull large numbers out of their asses (or maybe the asses of Social Security trustees) and come up with incredibly goofy measures of "unfunded liability," said to be "$74 trillion" for Medicare (THIS is typical). Now that $74 trillion is based on a highly unlikely model that runs in time to infinity, with a ZERO current value. It's just a speculative worst-case scenario.

The various bailout mechanisms Prins and Hates discuss are trillions committed by the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve just this past year! But the teabaggers and town meeting bullies get riled over a health plan that won't even cost 1/10 of a trillion dollars in the next year. You'll hardly find a sign at their rally that attacks the financier-gamblers who have really sucked at the teet of the public treasury.

This is quantitative confusion rearing its ugly head in the worst way. I actually applaud them for bringing out as many people as they did two weeks ago in DC. I share some of the critique of Obama. But mostly their message is very badly focused, led by deceptive jackass mouthpieces like Glenn Beck, and hence too laden with bigotry to be considered within the realm of reality. The who, why, and how of the screw-job eludes almost the entire population, not just the teabaggers. But this opens the door for Beck, Limbaugh, and the teabaggers to blame "socialism" or direct anger at low-income home buyers while never mentioning the financier criminal class. Hell, Sean Hannity actually was a shill for one of the worst, Allen Stanford.

Perhaps some insight can be taken from Lynn Arthur Steen. He is a now-retired professor from whom I took a course in linear algebra lo so many years ago. In a 142-page volume entitled MATHEMATICS and DEMOCRACY: The Case for Quantitative Literacy, produced in 2001 for The National Council on Education and the Disciplines, he writes:

Lynn Steen: Counting people, counting dollars, and counting votes are part of the numeracy of life. Unlike the higher mathematics that is required to design bridges or create cell phones, counting appears to require only rudimentary arithmetic. To be sure, when large numbers, multiple components, and interacting factors are involved, the planning required to ensure accurate counts does become relatively sophisticated. So even though the underlying quantitative concepts are typically rather elementary?primarily topics such as multiplication, percentages, and ratios?the mental effort required to comprehend and solve realistic counting problems is far from simple.

I have a sinking feeling that nobody really is in the mood to listen right now.

Obama forgets about Honduras, NPR doesn't notice

I shouldn't talk. I think this is my first post on the coup that removed democratically-elected President Manuel Zelaya from office in Honduras three months ago. So I'm not a great one to be criticizing news coverage of the coup.

But today I did find the time to listen to National Public Radio coverage of the UN speech given by President Obama. One would think Honduras is a major topic for the UN, since most member states have condemned the coups. In fact it is if you consider this week's events--Zelaya has re-entered the country, taking up residence at the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa amid a loud mass protest and accompanying police repression. Brazil has called for an emergency session of the UN Security Council, and Brazillian President Lula da Silva today at the UN--just prior to the speech by President Obama--said,

Lula: The international community demands that Mr Zelaya immediately return to the presidency of his country and must be alert to ensure the inviolability of Brazil's diplomatic mission in the capital of Honduras.

So, you'd think NPR could mention Honduras in its special coverage of the speech, and at least notice afterward that President Obama had zero, zip, nada to say about Honduras himself!! But, no, nothing on NPR special coverage.

Morning Edition did today carry this report, Deposed Honduran President Holed Up In Embassy, by Jason Beaubien. But the silence of the President is made all the more deafening by its lack of notice at NPR.

Update: HERE is a biting critique of Beaubien's reporting. NPR continues to peddle the distortion that "final straw" of Zelaya's actions while in office "was that he was attempting to put together a referendum that would have allowed him or someone else to run for president for a second term."

Maine senator does the dirty work on CBS Face the Nation


Wingnuttia rallies, Axelrod finesses, and Snowe leads her gang on Face the Nation

Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME): I urged the president to take the public option off the table, because it's universally opposed by all Republicans in the Senate. And therefore, there's no way to pass a plan that includes the public option. So I think he's recognizing that, because it is a roadblock to building the kind of consensus that we need to move forward.

Let's first be absolutely clear about why any sort of public health plan is anathema and such a threat to Big Insurance and the politicians they own. It would divert their premium flow and possibly be run by people whose primary job is to pay the doctor bill rather than enrich their shareholders. It may not be "essential" to Sibelius and Obama, and it would be according to White House spokesman Axelrod "unfortunate" (though apparently not a deal breaker) to have a bill without it. What is extremely essential to Big Insurance is the public plan be killed.

Here's what bugged me about the health insurance speech given by President Obama on Wednesday. It was the way he lumped together and dismissed "left" and "right" reform as a "radical shift that would disrupt the health care most people currently have." Then he finessed his clear desire to drop the public option with rhetoric about keeping "insurance companies honest" while keeping the White House door "open" to "serious" proposals.

I read that as an invitation to submit ways to silence demand for the public option, like the triggers (Snowe's pet idea, but she says herself that's going nowhere) or co-ops, which look to me to be a sham.

Furthermore, the true meaning of this open door policy may be discerned, I believe, if you take a look at who is having trouble entering that door. Earlier in the week there was a story about a new letter to the president from the progressive, pro-public-option Congressional block. As Greg Sargent explained, that White House door has been elusive to the public option group: "Obama had originally promised a meeting to progressives, but mysteriously, it never materialized."

That said, what was the top news story generated by the speech? It was the "You lie" remark from a reactionary Congressman against Obama's assurance that undocumented persons would not receive health benefits under reform. This was leading the news as late as Thursday evening, and even Olympia was taking Congressman Wilson to the woodshed on Sunday.

In fact I find it pathetic that Obama trying to set the record straight about what really is a gutless capitulation on wingnuttia's pet health reform demon--that some undeserving shlub here contrary to status laws may be able to get a flu shot or a bone set--becomes the most important story. Alexander Cockburn aptly pointed out that what Congressman Wilson shouted was true, only about a different part of the speech:

Alexander Cockburn: Joe Wilson of South Carolina shouted out "You lie", when Obama said correctly that his plan wouldn't offer services to illegal immigrants. By so saying, of course, Obama was acknowledging that he had just lied when he declared at the start of his speech that adequate medical care is a basic human right. Are undocumented workers, who sustain America's agriculture and much of its building industry, not humans, or humans without rights like the captives Obama still wishes to classify as beyond the protections of the Geneva Protocols?

Here are previous posts that illustrate just how dead the public option is. Given the remarks by Snowe on Sunday, nothing discussed in these was changed due to the Obama speech:

• Collins: "I oppose the public plan"
• Snowe amongst the rubes
• Health negotiations on C-Span?
• Health insurance winners
• Public option died (somebody tell Howard Dean)
• Unprincipled health insurance non-reform
• Public option dead at the hand of Snowe?
• Wanking single payer
• Pro-Obama health care rally in Bangor

How the War Party softened the public for the taking of Iraq

Perhaps the most incredible war propaganda piece of all time was published by the liberal New York Times on September 8, 2002:

U.S. Says Hussein Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts
By MICHAEL R. GORDON and JUDITH MILLER
Published: Sunday, September 8, 2002

WASHINGTON, Sept. 7 More than a decade after Saddam Hussein agreed to give up weapons of mass destruction, Iraq has stepped up its quest for nuclear weapons and has embarked on a worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb, Bush administration officials said today.

In the last 14 months, Iraq has sought to buy thousands of specially designed aluminum tubes, which American officials believe were intended as components of centrifuges to enrich uranium. American officials said several efforts to arrange the shipment of the aluminum tubes were blocked or intercepted but declined to say, citing the sensitivity of the intelligence, where they came from or how they were stopped.

The diameter, thickness and other technical specifications of the aluminum tubes had persuaded American intelligence experts that they were meant for Iraq's nuclear program, officials said, and that the latest attempt to ship the material had taken place in recent months.

Then they finally could tell us, six months after it was too late, the Al tubes were better suited for drain pipe:

Search in Iraq Fails to Find Nuclear Threat No Evidence Uncovered Of Reconstituted Program
By Barton Gellman | Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 26, 2003; Page A01

In their march to Baghdad on April 8, U.S. Marines charged past a row of eucalyptus trees that lined the boneyard of Iraq's thwarted nuclear dream. Sixty acres of warehouses behind the tree line, held under United Nations seal at Ash Shaykhili, stored machine tools, consoles and instruments from the nuclear weapons program cut short by the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Thirty miles to the north and west, Army troops were rolling through the precincts of the Nasr munitions plant. Inside, stacked in oblong wooden crates, were thousands of high-strength aluminum tubes. ...

Most notably, investigators have judged the aluminum tubes to be "innocuous," according to Australian Brig. Gen. Stephen D. Meekin, who commands the Joint Captured Enemy Materiel Exploitation Center, the largest of a half-dozen units that report to Kay. That finding is pivotal, because the Bush administration built its case on the proposition that Iraq aimed to use those tubes as centrifuge rotors to enrich uranium for the core of a nuclear warhead. ...

Participants in the Pentagon-directed special weapons teams, interviewed repeatedly since late last spring, noted that Kay's operation has taken no steps to collect the estimated 20,000 tubes in Iraq's inventory -- some badly corroded, but others of higher quality than the ones the U.S. government intercepted in Jordan three years ago and described as dangerous technology.

"If you told me they had access to these tubes and have chosen not to seize and destroy them, it undermines the judgment that these tubes are usable for, if not intended for, centrifuge development," said Robert Gallucci, dean of Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, who retains his classified clearances and still consults with government analysts on Iraq.

Meekin said he no longer knows the whereabouts of the tubes once stacked at Nasr. "They weren't our highest priority," he said. "The thing's innocuous." Unguarded, the tubes "could be in arms plants, scattered around, being grabbed by looters, perhaps in scrap metal yards."

Scavengers, he said, most likely have "sold them as drain pipe."

Unless you read Harry Shearer, or watch Grit TV:



If you can stay with that to about the 10th minute, you'll hear amazing stories of racism and abuse of reconstruction workers you probably did not think possible in America. It struck me partly because I once had my wages stolen by a company after I had done weeks of on-site work.

The Attorney General will not investigate. According to the cited Bangor Daily News article, she said "the latest e-mail clearly indicated that 'David Undeliverable' has no firsthand knowledge of any improprieties in the testing process and based his allegations on the alleged knowledge of some unidentified person."

I don't think this fully exonerates FairPoint of fudging its readiness to handle our phones.

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